Has the U.S. Disengaged from the Universal Periodic Review?

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

WASHINGTON, D.C. July 18 (C-Fam) The United States is scheduled to have its human rights record reviewed by UN member states later this year as part of a process called the Universal Periodic Review. However, there are questions about whether the Trump administration will actually participate in the process, which operates under the oversight of the UN Human Rights Council, which the Trump administration has criticized as anti-Israel and lacking credibility.

The administration withdrew from the international body in February this year, saying it lacked credibility because its members include countries like North Korea, Iran, and Russia. It also ceased to engage with the Universal Periodic Review altogether.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) was established by a 2006 mandate of the UN Human Rights Council.  Every 4 to 5 years, each UN member state submits its human rights record to scrutiny from other member states. Other states ask questions of the country under review, and it can either “accept” or “note” them.

The U.S. has actively participated in the mechanism since the beginning, including being reviewed three times and making human rights recommendations to other countries. However, the last statement from the U.S. in the UPR process was made on the final day of the Biden presidency in the January 2025 session. The U.S. government has not issued another recommendation since Trump took office.

The fact that the U.S. government has ceased to engage the Human Rights Council altogether raises the possibility that the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the UN body may be complete and that it will not submit its human rights record to scrutiny by other member states. This would be a change from the first Trump term. The U.S. government submitted a report to the Universal Periodic Review in 2020 despite having withdrawn from the Human Rights Council in 2018. It also continued to make recommendations to other countries during the Universal Periodic Review. The UPR was intended to be a forum for positive peer pressure on human rights issues. National governments talk to each other and respond to each other’s recommendations on the record.  Inevitably, as with most UN mechanisms, it has been politicized. Some countries use it to promote controversial issues like abortion and gender ideology, which are not universally accepted as human rights issues.

During the presidency of Barack Obama, the U.S. government pressured other countries with numerous recommendations on homosexual/transgender issues, including calls to decriminalize homosexual behavior and adopt antidiscrimination laws based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  This continued in the first Trump administration.

The Biden administration made even more aggressive and controversial recommendations, including pressuring countries to adopt same-sex marriage as a human rights matter.  Biden also pressured Benin and Guatemala to withdraw their signatures from the pro-life Geneva Consensus Declaration, an initiative established by Trump.

If the U.S. intends to participate in its scheduled review in November, the deadline for the submission of its national report is August 4. If the current Trump administration does not submit a national report for the upcoming session of the Universal Periodic Review, the Human Rights Council may postpone the U.S. review to a later session, likely in 2027, as it has done for Ukraine and Myanmar due to conflict and political instability. That may not matter so long as Trump is in office.

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